Perceiving economic issues through a critical realist lens

Abstract

Mainstream economics, dominated by the neoclassical economics orthodoxy, is accused of being complicit with much of what has gone wrong with economic life in the last thirty years, such as failing to predict the global financial crises of 2007-2008 (Skidelsky, 2020). Values such as sustainability, love, justice, pity, courage, honour, loyalty, ambition, and public service tend also not to be considered in the hypothesis of neoclassical economists. The various problems concerning mainstream economics have led even its proponents to question the capacity of orthodox economics to account for real-world events or for assisting in policy formulation. In this paper I argue in favour of an alternative conceptualisation for making sense of economic issues: critical realism. It is a philosophy originally developed by Roy Bhaskar in the 1970s and developed over the following decades.